COVID-19 has been in the state of Washington for just about a year and a half. Starting in 2019, Covid has affected people all over the world and still continues to do so. One of the biggest impacts of Covid has been the mental health of students and just keeping up with school. During quarantine, almost all schools went under lockdown and schooling changed from in-person to online completely. Bellevue College had a similar situation and went completely online, however recently during the 2021-2022 school year they had agreed to let some classes be online. However, around Dec. 2021, it was announced that the Winter Quarter was going to be allowing on-campus activities to take place, along with classes to be in person. Although the original date that had been announced was Jan. 3, it was later changed to Jan. 28 and then again to Feb. 6.
This constant change of date for going back on campus affected a lot of people that might have taken a class especially to be in person. According to Sorrel Robertson, a running start student at Bellevue College, “I think for certain classes it is very beneficial to be in person like personally, I’m taking a biology class so I think that it’s really important to have hands-on experience.” The hands-on experience required for most classes is important especially if they are in person, but some if not most of them continue to stay online causing a lot of gaps in the laboratory portion of these classes. However, some students preferred to stay online. For example, Alex Steven Hardwood, another student at Bellevue College, said “Honestly I’ve never been on campus at Bellevue College… The date change of going back in person I feel is good because a lot of people still want to stay online in my opinion. Personally, it doesn’t affect me because I prefer and have all my classes online.”.
Meanwhile, other students like Sanskar Tomar say, “I wish they told us about the date change earlier but honestly I’m just glad to be back in person. After being on campus myself and seeing the state of affairs it’s clear that there doesn’t seem to be much danger of covid as public places. Much of the campus is empty at most times and when in a classroom we are heavily spaced out.” However, through all these opinions, many students prefer certain classes to remain online and others to be in person depending on the subject and the requirements of the classes. Another student, Jordan Eaton said, “Although I’m part of the crowd that decided it was best to stick to online classes this quarter, getting to see and hear of the in-person activity is great. Even if we are masked up and maintaining distance it’s the principle of social interaction. Getting to see familiar faces and friendly waves. It sets out the positive vibe that we as Bellevue community are one step closer to positive change surrounding COVID-19.” She also said, “In my honest opinion it’s all about preference. While others may feel safe, others might not. What I love about Bellevue is they took that into account when letting us choose classes. We had the option to stay online or choose classes that would eventually go back in person. We were not confined to one decision and had the freedom to make our own…which I feel is important as young and grown adults.”
Jordan couldn’t have stated it better. The changes to in-person differ from person to person but most of them don’t seem to be affected much by it and in fact, prefer being online.
